


Reflections in Flames

by Ayulsa (execharmonious)



Category: Loveless
Genre: Gen, psychopathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-18
Updated: 2010-02-18
Packaged: 2017-10-07 08:55:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/execharmonious/pseuds/Ayulsa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fighter and a sacrifice are mirrors of each other. Seimei doesn't like what he sees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reflections in Flames

"People can be reborn, you know."

Nisei watches him with dull eyes. His words stupefy, empty syllables that flow over his consciousness; as if, before breathing them into gasoline-soaked air, he caught them on his lips, sucked and chewed all of the meaning out of them. The subtleties are felt only by the Sacrifice, now.

All the Fighter hears is the flat, monotonous ringing of a sole Command, felt yet unspoken. _Be still_; and though only stillness in body was implied, to absorb the order, to be the order, is also stilling to his mind. It's stifling, in these wet clothes, these dry thoughts. Thoughts dry, to burn. Clothes wet, to burn.

It's strangely soothing. Numbing, like a drug.

So Seimei's next words are only spoken to himself, unhinted as they are by the echo of Commands; thus meaningless, to Nisei.

"Sometimes, like butterflies. Putrefied to a rotting pulp, then recrafted in the very image of beauty. And sometimes, like the phoenix of the West; reduced to ashes, to rise again from the flames."

Seimei doesn't seem to mind. He mostly speaks, it seems, for his own benefit.

It has always been thus.

"A Fighter and a Sacrifice each reflect upon the other. One being in two bodies. You are not merely a statement about yourself: you speak also of my nature. You say something about me."

In the midst of muted thoughts, a trickle of colour runs through Nisei's mind, a wondering; maybe the gasoline soaks through his skin. Poisons him, makes him hallucinate.

Or maybe it's just the _pound, pound, pound_ing of that one lone Command, fracturing concentration into incomprehensible shards. Here a cat-ear, flicking, wary; there, a button on a coat.

"I do not like what you say."

The world is coming apart, at Seimei's touch, at Seimei's Word.

"Filthy. Despicable. Soulless."

_A mirror of you._

"A mirror of me. I despise it. It shall shatter."

Orange-bright halogen-glow bounces from the lamps outside, refracts off a single sphere that streaks down the centre of Nisei's unravelling world, watery, alive. Tears.

"I don't want to be you."

Heat rises, a flush that stains the Sacrifice's cheeks.

"Don't touch me. Don't be close to me."

It rushes out like an extinguished candle, snatched back, precious emotions withdrawn. The bond, severed, severing.

With instincts like a drowning man's, he clings to the last fragment, expanding his mind, desperate to hear. And through that last flicker of connection, Seimei speaks one final Command, shaky and weak with feeling.

To his searching senses, it is loud as sirens, taking everything else away.

"Light it."

Without changing his blank expression, Nisei flicks the lighter to life.

***

Seimei, prudently, stands back.

Ritsuka will need a new chair.

***

"You smell like ashes."

"So do you," says Seimei, walking on past the smoke-wreathed Fighter. Like melting, like shadows, Soubi falls into place behind his Sacrifice as he walks, as if it had ever been so. Seimei's tone, his motions, are not rebuff; they are invitations to routine.

A routine they invented today, just now. But any routine is better than none; to Soubi, at the least.

"You should quit that filthy habit," Seimei adds; more conversational than usual, and Soubi _mm_s, affirmatively, wanting to acknowledge that gift. "It reflects badly on me."

Dutifully, Soubi stubs out the dregs of his cigarette on the rough stone wall, watching its frazzled body break and crumble to soot.


End file.
